Pakistan offers scholarships to hundreds of Afghans

KABUL (PAN): Hundreds of Afghan students would be leaving for Pakistan between July and December on fully-funded scholarships for graduate and post-graduate studies, the Pakistani ambassador said on Friday.
As many as 729 Afghans have been offered scholarships in the fields of medicine, engineering, information technology, business administration, agriculture, economics, natural sciences and teaching.
Ambassador Mohammad Sadiq said 600 of the scholarships had been granted by the government of Pakistan under a scheme announced in 2009 to give 2,000 fully funded scholarships to the Afghan students over the next three academic sessions.
In a statement, he said the remaining 129 scholarships are granted under the university-to-university cooperation programme between educational institutions in Afghanistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab.
Considering the need of doctors in Afghanistan, Pakistan had allocated 120 scholarships for degrees in medical sciences, the ambassador said, adding introductory classes of six months duration were being arranged to familiarise Afghans with English language and basic medical terminologies.
Currently, 6,500 Afghans were enrolled in graduate and postgraduate educational institutions of Pakistan, Sadiq said. The number is likely to increase to 10,000 over the next three years.
pr/mud